A few notes from History

As I mentioned earlier it is time for me to move onto my next obsession. Either marathon running or mountain climbing will require me to get back into shape. So I started running again this week and things have gone well so far.

On this mornings run a few items of history came to me. So here they are.

For those old enough in the audience, can you name the last time conservatives had a young, good looking, dim witted losing vice-presidential candidate that was sure to be the future of the Republican Party?........Times up. One clue - potatoe

I believe President elect Obama to be a student of history. He doesn't necessary look to history for the answers but the lessons. Here are a few he appears to have learned.

1976 Jimmy Carter was elected as an outsider to clean up Washington. A couple of the problems he ran into in governing was a Democratic congress that challenged him and bringing in a bunch of outsiders that did not know how to work Washington.

Jump to 2008 Pres. elect Obama has been brought in to change Washington and he again has a Democratic congress. A couple of interesting things present themselves. Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. I believe he is an excellent pick on many fronts but here are a few extra. As the leader of the DCCC that brought in scores of new Democratic members of the House in 2006 and 2008 he knows these members and they owe him. In addition being having been a member of the House Democratic leadership he has strong working relationships with both the Democratic and Republican leadership.

VP elect Joe Biden's extensive experience in the Senate has crafted long standing relationships with Senators on both sides of the aisle.

Obama is being watched closely because he is bringing back members of the former Clinton administration, is this Change. The thing to remember, he is the prime focus of the change and most importantly it is the policies that need changing. He knows to effectively bring about change of the end results you have to know how to get in there and work the system. After all the Constitution did establish the government on a basis of three separate and equal branches of government.

Landslide ? Mandate? - you decide.

Obama 2008 52.7%
Bush II 2000 47.9%
Clinton 1992 43%
Bush I 1988 53.4%
Reagan 1980 50.7%
Carter 1976 50.1%
Nixon 1968 43.4%
Kennedy 1960 49.7%
Eisenhower 1952 55.2%

This is a listing of popular vote of the first term of every President dating back to 1952. As you can see the only Presidents to perform better were Bush I and Eisenhower. Bush had the advantage of running for Reagan's third term and Eisenhower was of course a well known general by the time he ran.

That leads to some of the lessons learned from his study of Lincoln and his administration which I will have to address at a later time.